Chapter 39
Back At The Shop
Raff
Cliff has been on his phone for forty minutes.
I can see him through the open bay doors, pacing the back lot in a slow path, the way he does when he's having an intense conversation. His free hand moves occasionally as he talks.
He's been like this since the clinic.
I get it. The thing with Adam's scent gland, the underdeveloped right side, the doctor's careful recommendation that we leave it alone.
Cliff doesn't do well with problems he can't fix, and right now he's got two of them sitting in his shop, and one of them is his mated beta who just found out he's been an omega his entire life.
I drag a shop towel across my hands and look toward the office.
Through the glass partition, I see Elowen and Adam sitting across from each other at the small table in the corner. Adam is talking excitedly with his hands, and Elowen is leaning forward with her chin in her palm, listening with intense focus.
They've been in there for hours.
I'm glad.
I'm so fucking happy that Adam has someone who knows exactly what it feels like to wake up one morning as a completely different thing than you thought you were. I can love him through it, and I will, but I can't know him the way Elle does.
Nobody in this pack can except her.
"This alternator looks like absolute shit," Perrin says from under the hood of a silver Audi on the second lift, his arms buried to the elbow in the engine bay.
A podcast plays from the speaker on the tool chest that he's been pretending to listen to for the last hour.
"Where did Steven say he swiped this car from? "
"Airport long-term parking," I say.
Perrin makes a sound that suggests he finds this deeply unsurprising. He straightens up, wiping his forearm across his forehead, and looks at me, about to say something else, but then his eyes cut past my shoulder toward the lot outside and go still.
"Someone's pulling in," he says.
"I know," I say.
He looks at me. "You know?"
"I asked him to come."
"Him who?" Perrin straightens, wiping his hands on his jeans, and squints at the lots. Then he looks at me. "Why is Anton here?"
"Because I asked him to come," I say.
Perrin's brows pull together. "Does Cliff know?"
"He does," I say, and set the shop towel down on the tool chest. "Keep working."
Outside, Anton stands next to a black SUV that probably cost more than most people make in a year. His dark hair is trimmed short and clean, his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he takes in the shop like he’s remembering it fondly.
We did have some good times out here as kids.
Anton watches me cross the lot toward him, his dark eyes moving over my face like he’s trying to read me. He doesn't move to meet me halfway. He simply waits, which is its own kind of statement.
I stop a few feet away.
"Raff," he says finally.
"Anton," I say back. "Thanks for coming."
Anton nods as he leans against the driver's side door with his arms crossed, his eyes doing a slow, practiced sweep of the shop and the lot and the tree line beyond the fence before settling back on me.
It's subtle enough that most people wouldn't clock it, but I do.
Anton has always been careful about exits.
“So what do you want?” he ask flatly.
"I want to ask you something," I say. "And I want you to actually answer me."
"Depends on the question."
"Your supply chain," I say. "The medications that come through the Morder. Are you pulling from independent pharmacies?"
Anton's brows pull together, a slight crease appearing between them. "Why does that matter?" he asks.
"Answer the question, Anton."
He holds my gaze for a moment, still working it out behind his eyes. Then something shifts, a decision being made, and he uncrosses his arms briefly before pushing one hand in his pocket.
"I accept medications," he says carefully. "From various sources, and I pay well for them."
"That's a very clean way to put it," I say.
"It's accurate."
"Anton." I drop the pleasantness by one degree.
"I've known you since you were seventeen years old, stealing catalytic converters out of my father's yard.
Don't bullshit me." I cross my arms. "You've got runners and delivery guys.
You've got a whole operation that sources product from small independent pharmacies because the big chains have security systems and loss prevention, and you can't touch them.
" I pause. "Which is fine. I don't care about any of that. That's your business."
Anton is very still.
"But I need to know about a specific pharmacy," I say. "And I need you to be straight with me."
Anton's jaw shifts slightly. "Ask it."
"Cassville Care Pharmacy," I say. "Three years ago. It was robbed and two pharmacists were killed." I watch his face carefully. "Was that your guys?"
The silence that follows is not the comfortable kind.
Anton's expression doesn't change dramatically. It doesn't need to. I've known this man long enough to read the smaller things. The slight tightening around his eyes. The almost imperceptible shift in his weight. The way his jaw sets a fraction harder than it had a second ago.
"No," he says.
I look at him for a long moment.
"I don't believe you," I say simply.
Anton meets my gaze and holds it. "Why does it fucking matter?" he asks. "What do you care about a three-year-old robbery?”
I look at him for a second, and for one brief moment I consider telling him that those pharmacists were Elle's parents. And that she was in the back room when it happened.
I glance back toward the shop instead.
Perrin has pushed the office door open and is leaning against the frame, saying something to Adam. Elowen tips her head back, laughing at whatever it is, her dark hair falling back from her face.
She looks happy.
I turn back to Anton and find that he's looking past me, his eyes fixed on Elowen with an expression that makes something territorial move through my chest.
But the longer I stare at Anton, the more I realize there’s no heat in his gaze.
It's worry.
"How's she doing?" he asks, his eyes still on the window.
"She's fine," I say, my tone clipped. I fucking hate that he’s still looking at her.
"She settle in okay?” He finally tears his eyes off my woman. “With your pack?"
"Better than okay," I say.
He nods again. His jaw shifts slightly, working something over.
"She ever tell you much about herself?" he asks. "Before the Morder?"
I look at him carefully. "Some."
"She's smart," he says, and it doesn't sound like a compliment exactly.
It sounds like something that worries him.
"Smarter than she let on at work. I always thought she was overqualified for what I had her doing.
" His eyes finally leave the window and come back to me.
"She has a pharmacy degree. Did you know that?
A real one. She spent eight years of school.
" He shakes his head slightly. "And she's standing in a cold tent in the middle of nowhere checking expiration dates on stolen sedatives.
" He pauses. "That's not a person who ended up there by accident. "
I hold his gaze and say nothing.
"She was looking for something," Anton says. "I never knew what. But I knew she was looking." He looks back at the window one more time. "I don't want to see a bunch of assholes take advantage of her," he says flatly. "That's all."
The air sits quiet between us for a moment.
"Nobody's taking advantage of her," I say. "Not anymore."
Anton looks at me. Something in his expression shifts, like he’s trying to decide whether to believe me or not.
"Good," he says simply.
We stand there for another moment, staring down at one another, waiting for the other to speak.
“Anything else?” Anton finally asks. “Or can I go?”
"You can go, but if you decide you remember something about Cassville. I want to know."
Anton looks at me for a long moment, his brows pulling together. His eyes sweep from me to inside the garage. "Does this have something to do with Pérez?" The gravel shifts under his boots as he straightens off the SUV.
I don't answer.
"Did she know the people at Cassville Care?" he asks. His voice is quieter now, stripped of the careful, measured quality it's had for most of this conversation. Like he's asking something he actually wants to know the answer.
I don't answer that either.
But I don't have to.
Anton isn’t stupid. He looks at my face, reads whatever is or isn't there, and then his eyes move past me one more time to the office window. To Elowen laughing at something Adam said, completely unaware that we're standing out here talking about the worst thing that ever happened to her.
Anton's jaw tenses, then he reaches for the handle of his car.
"I'll see what I can find," he says quietly. Not a promise exactly. But from Anton, it's as close as I'm going to get.
"Thanks," I say.
He pulls the door open, then stops, one hand on the roof of the SUV, and looks back at me. "Take care of her, Raff."
"I plan to," I say.
He gets in. The engine turns over, low and smooth, and I stand in the lot and watch him pull out onto the road and disappear between the tree line.
Then I turn back toward the shop.
Cliff is standing in the bay door with his phone in his hand and his arms crossed, watching me with an expression that says he has been there long enough to see most of that conversation and has approximately forty-seven questions.
"Did he know anything?" he says.
"He said he didn’t," I say, walking toward him.
Cliff is quiet for a moment as he falls in step beside me as we walk back into the shop. "Did you tell him about Elle?"
"I didn't tell him anything," I say. "But he figured it out.”
Cliff looks toward the office window, where Elowen and Adam are still talking, their voices a low, comfortable murmur through the glass.